🎵 JJ's Piano Playing 🎹

Documenting the journey rediscovering my piano hobby.

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✅ TODO

JJ van Zon, 2022

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More specific TODO lists may be in other documents.

TODO

2025-10-27 TODO Body Rigidity

I’ve mapped body motions and invented symbols, but I haven’t quite mapped the parts of the body that have a natural rigidity that you can use for “free stationary force” so to speak. I have incorporated the “free force” from gravity that you can use instead of muscle strain. “Free stationary force” would be a nice tool to be aware of to unburden more muscles more often.

Just like the “bounciness” of the keyboard itself is also an external free force you use. The collision alone can give you a bounce back. The weightedness and slight springiness built in can help. Sometimes it’s missing in a certain specimen of piano, which you then also have to adjust to.

As such the rigid, immobile parts of the body can help. Start mapping out with the fingers and then the wrist and working our way up the arm and onward.

2022-03-13 TODO Specifics

• Renaming “Sheet Music Simplified” to “Sheet Music with Simplified Notation”
• … Satie Gnossienne Ⅰ
  • … Practicing something new and doable.
  • … Retroactive sheet music changes:
    • Sheet Music with Simplified Notation:
      • Left hand 9ths => right hand extra notes.
      • Double lines for fragments.
      • Line breaks more according to fragments.
      • “Simplified Notation” a sub-title.
      • Check & correct
    • With Rehearsal Marks:
      • Left hand 9ths / octaves => right hand extra notes.
      • “With Rehearsal Marks” a sub-title.
    • Before making versions with chords.
  • Recording: Editing practice recording: around 1:15 there are 2 pauses.
• Rehearsing all to not forget.
• Omitting further large piece analyses (Chopin Ballade Ⅱ)
  • (More work than energy for. Taking away attention smaller pieces.)
• … Sheet Music with Simplified Notation using MuseScore for:
  • … Chopin - Ballade Ⅱ
  • Debussy - Arabesque Ⅰ (?)
  • Satie - Gnossienne Ⅰ (?)

2021-11-16 TODO Notation & Memorizing

• Changing rehearsal numbering for:
  • Chopin - Ballade Ⅱ
  • Chopin - Mazurka Op. 24, No. 2
• Chopin - Mazurka Op. 24, No. 2
  • Memorizing chords?
  • See specialized TODO
• Debussy - Arabesque Ⅰ
  • Chords & sheet music
  • See specialized TODO
• Satie - Gnossienne Ⅰ
  • Chords
  • Structure analysis (for memorization)
  • Harmonic analysis
  • See studying notes
• Learning a piece by ear.
• Nord Piano Sound Selections
  • Might become more relevant once I might improvise more.

2021-11-16 TODO Listing Pieces to Play

• Listing of pieces that I play / have played / would like to play.
• Using 100 Songs You´ve Heard And Don´t Know The Name
• Making links handier (HTML-style, open in separate tab).
• ~ Using MIDI recordings.
• Using books in attic. > Not classical.
• … Using books in closet.
• … Using Spotify playlists.
  • Have Played
  • Want to Play
  • Chopin Etc. (Heavy)
  • Chopin Etc. (Melancholic)
  • Chopin Etc. (Atmospheric)
  • Chopin Etc. (Easy Listening)
  • Chopin Mazurka Selection
• Media:
  • Adding links to media.
  • … Both a YouTube and a Spotify link for each piece.
    • WAS AT: “Might Like to Play, Hard”
  • Would like the YouTube media to show hands.
  • Would like the Spotify media to be nice to listen to.
  • Perhaps make playlists eventually and link to them.

2021-11-16 TODO Technique

• Rehearsing Barbara Lister-Sink suggestions.
• Barbara Lister-Sink Basic Stroke:
  • Basic Stroke
  • Might still want to summarize that and add to:
  • Barbara Lister-Sink’s “Freeing the Caged Bird” Videos Summary
  • DVD Contents / Ordering
  • I guess you’d really just have to buy the DVD for the entire thing (+/- 2.5 hours)
• Lower arm tension:
  • Tension in lower arm seems my pitfall.
  • I have tension in lower arm seemingly regardless of posture.
  • But of a few postures / motions seem to relieve the tension.
  • Other postures cramp up my forearm.
  • I would like to crack this puzzle.
• Wire in the way: might not improve technique without replacing it
• Piano Motion Symbols idea
  • Considering Debussy Arabesque 1 motion annotations.
  • Considering whatever motions comes to mind.
  • Considering “Piano curriculum” doc “Motorische techniek”.
  • Considering “Piano Technique Ideas” doc.
  • Considering loose idea docs
  • Reorganized Piano folder.
  • Less harsh wording in loose idea docs
  • Digitizing what I have.
  • .. Systemizing more details.
  • Considering left-over things in “Piano Technique Ideas” under “2021-11-27 Brainstorm Motion Notation”.
• Burgmüller Etudes for technique.
  • With those I show tension.
  • Perhaps it can be used to practice technique regarding tension.
  • But then in a slightly lighter setting.

Done

2022-01-13 Done GitHub Pages

• Googling “convert markdown github to web page” leads to How to convert GitHub Markdown files to a simple website
• GitHub pages did not work yet. Waiting a while to see if it starts up automatically.
• Renaming root README to have lower case extension .md helped.
• Links to folders do not seem to work. Maybe also changing the file extension to lower case for those readme’s.
• Automatic links do not seem to work. Using the syntax [Description](https:\\my-url) may help.
• Link to Archive seemed to not work: Piano Playing Docs. Adding a README.md to that folder helped.
• Perhaps adding author name and date to articles. It may be useful now that it is in web site form. Or perhaps only the date or only the month or year.
• Horizontal lines:
  • Grid rows with only dashes in it seemed to not render.
  • Horizontal line ----- seems interpreted as headings in bullet pointed lists.
  • <br/><br/> seems an alternative for horizontal space in lists.
  • ----- formatted as inline code seems to help inside table rows.
• Table layout seems applied inappropriately when using | in a bullet point’s text. Replaced with commas ,.
• MarkDown (tables) nested in HTML tables showed the MarkDown literally inside the rendered page.
  • Trying a trick <td markdown="1"> from here helped.
• Links that start with slash, seem to use the wrong base URL and makes links break
  • E.g. link to “/methods/practice-schema.md” does not seem to work.
  • baseurl in _config.yml did not help.
  • prefixing URL with /Piano-Playing-Docs made link break in places other than GitHub Pages and GitHub pages would link to the .md instead of .html.
  • Using absolute paths to the GitHub pages html page instead as a work-around.
• No home link, like clicking on the logo.
  • Back buttons instead.
  • Adding [back](/Piano-Playing-Docs/README.html) in a document
  • And [back](../README.md) in a folder or README.md.
• “(MarkDown)” with a link does not seem to mean much on the GitHub Pages. Perhaps calling it “(Web Page)” instead.
• Extra title “Piano Playing Docs” might be a bit redundant.
• External links to open in new tab using <a> tags.
• ~ More images at top of pages

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